


"There is Too Much Now"

by endoftheziam



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Time Having Sex, Castiel/Dean Winchester in Purgatory, Destiel - Freeform, Disclaimer: I am not caught up, I wrote this after I heard about destiel, M/M, Season/Series 14, Season/Series 14 Spoilers, Supernatural100 | Supernatural Drabble Community, Until it Doesn't, What happens in Purgatory Stays in Purgatory, canon compliant if u believe in yourself, disclaimer: I am not caught u, instead of dealing with his problems, michaael, michael supernatural - Freeform, not technically, season 14, the world is too much with us, what happens in purgatory stays in purgator, where Dean decides to lock himself in a trun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:15:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27571387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endoftheziam/pseuds/endoftheziam
Summary: Who knew threatening to lock yourself in a  trunk at the bottom of the ocean to avoid inflicting a dickish angel upon the world  would lead to spontaneous declarations?Or, Cas realizes that he has nothing to lose.Okay, so basically I heard about Destiel being CANON, decided to actually catch up on supernatural, watched all the way to Season 14, then wrote this (still working on Season 15). Anyway, congrats everyone on having all destiel fic canon compliant. We did it, America.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 79





	"There is Too Much Now"

Cas didn’t say I love you on the first day he met Dean.

He didn’t know what it meant.

He’d been ordered to pull him out of Hell, and it was there he’d encountered the soul of Dean Winchester, the first time he felt it—the beginnings of a spark that engulfed all of him, brighter than the holy light.

Souls came in colors to Cas. Some were the bright yellow of innocence and optimism, a few even lending themselves to the white of holiness, the goodness that enveloped the saints.

Most, especially in Hell, were stained with the black of regret, the rotting green of wrath, or the sickly pallor of cruelty, of business unfinished and conflict unresolved.

Most of the souls Castiel had interacted with over the millennia were a mix, colored through with the blues and purples of sorrow, nuance. Good and bad. Mistakes and triumphs.

But Dean Winchester was different. He was a bright, brilliant red. The kind that hurt to look at.

Red with unfinished business. Red with love for the brother he would leave behind.

Red with rage at himself, at the choices that had led him to his torment.

Red with self-loathing and self-hatred.

Cas could tell that Dean saw himself as the worst of humanity, that a part of him believed he had deserved to be sent to Hell for eternity.

Dean was one of the only souls that seemed to live with his punishment, to accept it stoically.

But Cas grasped him, and gripped him tight…

He sort of felt it then.

A surge in his consciousness, the moment his fingers burned into Dean’s arm. The awareness that arose as he deposited Dean back on Earth and disappeared, as he watched him blink awake, his eyes wide and somehow soft, even after all that the soul behind them had experienced.

He felt— _something._

But he didn’t know what it was. He was an Angel of the Lord. An immortal, eternal being.

Angels did not fall in love. 

Angels did not _want._

He’d been in existence for millennia, and he had never felt what he was feeling now. He’d never knownthat it _could_ be felt—that _feeling_ existed.

It was as though he had been reborn.

He didn’t say a word when he met Dean in person, walked toward him in his suit of human flesh, bewildered and wide-eyed.

He looked upon Dean Winchester’s face, his swoop of dark hair, green eyes like the moors over the cliffs in Ireland, doll-like lips, and he could barely speak the words he had been sent to say. “My name is Castiel,” he said, his voice shaking. “And I am an angel of the Lord.” 

He didn’t know what was coursing through his body, intensifying the closer Dean got, because he was Castiel. He was an angel, and he didn’t have a name for it.

He didn’t understand

*

Later, he knew.

The more Castiel watched the humans, really _watched_ them, the more he lived among them, the more he understood. The more he _saw._

He started to read the romances, flipping the pages in the dark of the night, beneath the stars. He read dozens, his fingers lingering over the first kiss, the first time the hero or heroine would say those words, simple and somehow more devastating than the grandest, most eloquent proclamation:

_“I love you.”_

And as he read, Cas kept poking at the feeling. Circling it like a wary animal. Trying to understand. To figure out what was happening. What was _possible._

And then, he was flipping through the channels in another dive hotel, Dean fast asleep in the room next to his, and he saw it. Two men, holding hands. Fingers in each other’s hair. A soft, whispered declaration. Those precious words.

And he knew, with an awareness that resonated deep in his chest, exactly what he was feeling. Exactly what it meant.

It terrified him.

It was an awe, a profound terror, a sense of supreme humility and worshipfulness, the type of power he’d only ever experienced in God’s presence. The type of thing he didn’t think he could ever feel for a fragile human, with his deep green eyes and doll-like lips, the calluses that spanned his palms and his rough, commanding voice.

But still, Dean would just _look_ at him, and Castiel couldn’t…he couldn’t _breathe._

No wonder mankind was capable of so many things, if they could feel something like this. If a human could absorb this much feeling, this much _awe,_ and not explode?

Castiel felt that his vessel would burst at the seams from the force of it.

*

Cas wanted to tell Dean. _Needed_ to, as the pressure built inside him, like the sun forcing its way across the sky, like the holy words that would gather power even as they were spoken. Inexorable and insistent.

The morning, when Dean blearily handed him a coffee and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, swollen and red-rimmed, Cas had felt Dean’s fingers brush his sleeve, and his skin as prickled as though it were about to catch fire, and he’d almost said it. 

But Sam came in a moment later, his eyes equally as swollen and despair drooping his shoulders, and there was Michael to fight and Lucifer to ward against, and Gabriel to consider.

And Castiel let the moment slip away.

_Not now,_ he thought. _There is too much now._

He almost said it again after he had beaten Dean bloody. Dean’s face was a crater of blood and gore, whispering Cas’s name over and over. Broken, bleeding.

Refusing to give up.

When Castiel finally came back to himself, his fists raw from their connection with Dean’s cheekbone, his knuckles split, the words almost escaped. His eyes met Dean’s, and he nearly bit his tongue trying to keep them in.

_Not now,_ he thought. _There is too much now._

Dean was hurt, he was bleeding.

It was best not to say a word.

*

It didn’t make sense to say it.

What if Dean never saw him that way? After all, he’d never made any indication, never given more than a hint that could easily be brushed off as playful banter. 

Only, humans were so confusing, and there was that one time, “ _the last time someone looked at me like that, I got laid,”_ and the way he’d said, _you look…_ and trailed off, coughing, and the warmth in his eyes when Cas would appear before him, the tone of the prayers that Cas always listened to, even when it was the same thing over and over, even if Dean was angry…

Cas tried to tally up every moment, to make the score settle in certainty. To convince himself that Dean loved him, and was just afraid to say it.

But he always came up short.

 _Dean would have said something,_ he thought to himself. _Better not to ruin it._

_Better to try to move on._

_There is too much now._

*

He couldn’t ever get past it.

Castiel loved Dean Winchester. He would love him until death, or whatever darkness came to claim his existence. He would love him every single day, even if he never saw him again.

_There is too much now._

When he’d finally had sex with that woman, and Dean had congratulated him, but still somehow missed the aching emptiness inside of him, the realization that what he and the woman had done could not touch what he felt right now, with dean sitting so close to him, Cas had known that there was no chance.

No shot in Heaven or Hell.

He knew he couldn’t say a word. 

*

But it seemed like everything was part of it, anyway.

Listening to Dean’s prayers at night, or eating with him in a restaurant. It seemed as though every word out of Cas’ mouth dripped, “ _I love you, Dean.”_

But Dean didn’t seem to hear a it.

Until Michael returned, and Dean had to lock him inside a bar with weak, wooden walls in his mind, and hope that it was enough.

Until Sam told Castiel of Dean’s plan. To be locked in a trunk for eternity. To be alone and dying over and over. Drowning in a neverending grave, rather than let Michael wreak his havoc upon the world. The ultimate end.

The final sacrifice.

A resigned soul in Hell.

And something snapped inside Castiel. Something broke apart, some kind of dam burst.

Who was he preserving by not saying what he felt, if Dean was wiling to throw his own life away on a whim?

What was he waiting for?

What jinx or bad blood could be any worse than the thousands of things they’d faced together, after so many years?

_There is too much now._

_*_

Dean must have heard the flutter of Cas’s wings. When Cas arrived, he was sitting up in bed, his green eyes squinty with sleep, tucking his knuckles into his fists so that Cas wouldn’t see the scars.

Cas sat down quietly on the edge of the bed.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Dean whispered, not even bothering to look at him. “But I’ve made up my mind-“

“Dean—”

“You didn’t see it, Cas. Michael will burn the whole world to the ground in any other situation. Except here. Except this one.”

“Dean—”

“There’s no getting out of it this time. And Cas—” he reached forward to take Cas’s hand, and Cas nearly jumped out of his skin. Dean never touched anyone, never held them, not like that.

At least, not Castiel.

But all he said was, “Take care of Sammy. Protect him.”

Castiel squeezed Dean’s hand.

And Dean took his hand away, turning over to his side.

“Is that all?” Cas finally choked out, clenching and unclenching his fist. “You don’t even want to hear what I’ve got to say?”

“Pretty sure you said everything already.”

“Dean,” Cas whispered, his voice near-broken.

“I’m going to sleep.” 

“I don’t see the point of you ignoring this any longer. Not when you’re about to end it, anyway.”

“Cas, I don’t know what—”

“In Purgatory, do you remember any of it? Do you remember—” Cas cut himself off, but he could tell that Dean saw it.

It had been the hardest time of Cas’s existence, the days after that night in Purgatory.

When Dean had kissed him and held him through the night, his fingers against his cheek, and Cas had felt his heart open like shutters in a hurricane, whirled out into a maelstrom of feeling.

When Dean had ignored him for the rest of their time in Purgatory, and then, when they’d returned to Earth…

He hadn’t said a word.

_There is too much now._

Dean rolled over, and his face was flushed, his eyes luminous. He glared at Cas. “You know that I wasn’t—I thought—”

“You have got to stop acting like _this_ —” he took Dean’s hand again and held on as tightly as he could. “—Isn’t.”

“Cas—” Dean bit his lip, and tilted his head forward, his long eyelashes fluttering.

“ _Dean.”_

“NO.” Dean jerked back suddenly, wrenching his hand out of Cas’s. “Don’t make me go there, _Castiel_. _Please.”_

Castiel sat back. “Would it really be so horrible?” He could feel tears flowing down his cheeks, and he blinked them away. “Loving me?”

“I do love you, but—”

“Not like that.” Castiel looked away for a moment, willing his chin not to tremble. Willing himself not to fly away, to let the moment fade, as so many of them had.

He knew that Dean would be happy to drop it. That they could see each other in the morning, and everything would be exactly as it had been.

Cas would love Dean.

Dean would ignore it.

And neither of them would say a word.

But the love was too much.

That surge of feeling, brighter and deeper than the holy light. And he thought of all the fights they’d been through. The forays into Hell and Heaven and everywhere in between. The way they would fall asleep after a hunt, Dean’s head still bent over a bottle of Bourbon.

He thought about how this time in a week, Dean fully intended to have resigned himself to a Hellish prison for eternity.

Just like he’d been all those years ago, when Cas had found him, and gripped him tight…

_There is too much now._

Cas turned back to Dean. He fixed him with his gaze, and he felt Dean’s breathing quicken, heard the thud of his heartbeat in his ears. _I’ll lift you up, Dean._ Cas thought. _I won’t let go._

“I love you, Dean,” Castiel said. “And I know you don’t want to hear it, but you need to. You _have_ to. Since the day I met you, facing down Michael and Lucifer, fighting through apocalypse after apocalypse, through Heaven and Hell—I have loved you. I have loved you like my own Grace, my own soul. I have loved you as my own, and when you are apart from me, when I see you in pain, it as though someone has opened a vein across my wrists and bled me dry.”

“Cas, please—” Dean’s lip was trembling, and he had that stubborn look on his face, the kind he got whenever you told him something he didn’t want to hear.

But the torrent of words had started, and Castiel couldn’t stop them. “I have loved you when you have loved another, and never said a word. I have loved you in sickness, in death. The first thing I ever did was walk into Hell for you, and I would do it over. I would fight through a thousand Apocalypses, as long as I got to be next to you.”

I’m dying, Cas. There is no way to stop it. _Let me go.”_

“You are not dying.” Castiel said firmly. “You are choosing to give up. Choosing not to fight, because you don’t think you deserve to have someone fight for you. But you’re wrong. Because I—I can’t live without you, Dean. I just _can’t.”_

Dean reached up to touch Castiel’s face, the calluses scraping against Castiel’s soft cheek. “Cas—” Dean choked, trying to get the words out.

Castiel grabbed Dean’s wrist. “Don’t tell me you’ve given up. Don’t tell me you deserve to be alone. _I’ve seen your soul, Dean.”_

Dean wrapped a hand around Castiel’s neck and pulled him closer. “Cas,” he whispered, as his lips brushed across Castiel’s.

“I’m never letting you go,” Castiel whispered. “If Michael comes to take you, I won’t let him. I’m never—”

But he couldn’t finish, because Dean had risen up and kissed him fully, breathlessly, his stubble scraping across Castiel’s own. And his lips were soft and perfect, and they seemed to know exactly how Castiel needed to be kissed, to be loved, instinctively, just like that night in Purgatory, when they had both thought themselves doomed, and the roars of the monsters and the hunted surrounded them on all sides.

Dean pulled Cas on top of him, shoving his trench coat off of his shoulders and running his hands up and down Castiel’s back, tracing the path where his wings would have been folded. Castiel groaned, and they moved together urgently, desperately.

Cas knew that this wasn’t a love story. All they felt might not matter when dawn broke across the horizon.

But in this new Purgatory, in this gap between one steel-trap of Fate and the next, Castiel held on to this one constant, this soul that had reborn him into holy defiance, after millennia of bland obedience.

It was not enough.

And it was too much.

_“I love you, Dean.”_


End file.
